Plasma-derived exosomal long noncoding RNAs of pancreatic cancer patients as novel blood-based biomarkers of disease

Abstract Background Pancreatic cancer (PaCa) is one of the most intractable and fatal malignancies and has been associated with the dysregulation of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). However, their clinical value in pancreatic cancer is poorly explained but is essential to improve the prognosis of PaCa. Methods In this study, we analyzed the plasma-derived exosomal lncRNA profiles in patients with PaCa by whole transcriptome sequencing analysis, and the expression levels of four plasma-derived exosomal lncRNAs (LINC01268, LINC02802, AC124854.2, and AL132657.1) in PaCa plasma were validated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT‒PCR). The relationship between the expression of the four lncRNAs and the clinicopathologic features of patients with PaCa was also evaluated. Results We demonstrated that exosomal LINC01268, LINC02802, AC124854.2, and AL132657.1 were highly expressed in PaCa plasma compared with normal controls and positively correlated with serum expression of CA19-9. The receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) of the four lncRNAs were 0.8044, 0.6587, 0.7023, and 0.6172, respectively, and the AUC value of the combination of the four exosomal lncRNAs was increased to 0.8130, with a sensitivity of 0.72 and specificity of 0.84, which suggested that plasma-derived exosomal LINC01268, LINC02802, AC124854.2, and AL132657.1 may be novel diagnostic markers for PaCa. Conclusions Our research revealed the plasma-derived exosomal long noncoding RNAs of PaCa patients were novel blood-based biomarkers of disease